Using the PDP-11 RT11 Operating System
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
- This video shows the basic commands to use in the PDP-11's RT11 Operating System.
It is being run on a PiDP-11 replica computer.
For more information on this project, see bigdanzblog.wo...
I was system manager for an 11/34 and two 11/44s from ‘79 to ‘88 running RSX11. The accounting people had monitors hung on it that just passed data through to their 11/70. I ran Fortran programs doing real time process control of a natural gas production, compression, processing, transmission and delivery system covering about 5,000 sq miles in south Texas. Those were the days!
I used to write microcode for the 11/44
@@rty1955 RSX and Fortran forever!
Does a smart phone make you stop and you realize where it came from? Crazy how far we've come
@@MatthewBaran When men were men, bits mattered and women wore hats!
@@MatthewBaran yes and now we have kiddie koders and you wonder why we have data breaches??? Gates made a mockery of the data processing industry
Thanks. That was very informative. I’d never tried to run RT11. I have no experience with it. The old interface paradigms sure do bring back a lot of (mixed) memories. Somehow elegant in how they got things done with very few ressources but yet very obtuse. Keep ‘em coming! Cheers from Canada!
Canadian Gouda you need ?
Why the junk on TH-cam, nostalgia for non social people ........
I built custom laboratory test systems in the 1980s. I worked with DEC PDP-11/23 RT-11 OS.
I designed several Q-BUS interfaces and wrote RT-11 MACRO-11 device drivers to FORTRAN and BASIC,
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) made so many contributions that nobody remembers today.
I used to work for Digital,you never see my crying i need nostalgia crap on TH-cam
Fortran and GW basic on DEC? Just forget it, trash it please !
DEC were an early promoter of Ethernet. They were the ones who insisted that Xerox’s original 3Mb/s network be boosted to 10Mb/s. They also were a major factor in the early development of X11. Everybody knows that the PDP-11 mini was where Unix first came to assume its recognizable form. But before that, the big PDP-10 machines were where influential OSes like TENEX and ITS were developed. And it’s also where Gary Kildall cross-developed early versions of CP/M.
So, many, many contributions to computing, still in use in some form today, but not widely recognized.
We built a lot of scientific data acquisition and control systems with RT-11 back in the day, primarily on LSI-11's. Fun to see again.
But why post that on TH-cam in 2023
non social people have nostalgia too ??? Trash the nostalgia .....Recycling it ! Or keep using it if you have a use case scenario !
Hey Alan, we probably toiled over the same machines back in the day. Good to see you again.
@@rontackaberry8202 Hi Ron! Yes, we did. Good to hear from you! :)
Wow you actually have one of the HP terminals that emulate DEC VT100! I’ve never seen one in the wild. HP made the best terminals…. I loved the crisp text.
I built my PiDP-11 last weekend. Been playing with 2.11 BSD on it, the older unix systems make me realize how convenient some of the modern things are like auto-complete of paths by hitting tab, etc.
I am using retro-cool-term to give me a more authentic vintage feel to using it and writing some 'C' programs on it.
I used RT11 back in summer 1985. There were PDP-11 models 10, 23, and 34 all running it. I remember the 6.3 filename system and the RK0 etc. volume names. They used 8 inch floppy drives. I still have the book "Working With RT-11" by Beaumont, Summerfield, and Wright, digital DECbooks, 1983. They had BASIC and FORTRAN IV. C was installed for experimentation but I'd never used C before at that time and couldn't get it to work and was never sure if it was my problem or if the admin hadn't installed C correctly. Edit: I remember the first time I learned the hard way that quirk you mentioned where you had to hit the Enter on the numeric keypad. I kept on and on and the admin's wife came in and helped me and said, "THIS enter key!"
This was very interesting to watch. I never had a chance to even see a PDP-11, so I didn't really have any experience.
Thanks for the good video and keep up the good work :)
KED, the Keypad Editor, was my favourite editor when using RT-11 and VMS. My next favourite was the Slate editor on AOS/VS, and today I am an vi(m) user.
I had a VT-52 terminal back in the day and there was a version of KED called K52 on RT-11 specifically for VT-52s IIRC. I was very lucky to have a PDP-11/10 as a “personal computer” in the 1980-83 period. Lovely and useful even with only 56KB RAM.
@@nickglazzard2385 OMG, VT-52s did work, yes, but they sucked, they felt awful. When they beeped at you it was a scratchy, raspy growl noise. A kind of audible electric shock. VT-100s were a revelation, especially with a decent screen editor
@@daffyduk77 :-) I dunno … I recall them as being ok in a quaint sort of way, but maybe rose tinted specs are involved!
what you run on them now, you failed to upgrade them ?
VMware in 2023 ??? what client ???
@@nickglazzard2385 but why in 2023 ?????
nostalgic crap for non social people ?
Ran RT-11 on my 11/23 very capable OS.
In 1985 an entire campus used a PDP-11/44 as a time share system. As student administrative support for the system, we had RA80 for disks as well. Learned so much 'basic' computing on that system, if memory serves we had RSTS/E 9 OS on it. By 1985 it was ancient of course. Now most 'programmers' are little more then graphic artists compared to back then, when you actually had to know the limits of the hardware in detail to write solid software. And A.I. in its various forms will hide even more details, so that we will have a generation of system analysts that actually think they are true programmers. But such is live.
5:58 I seem to vaguely recall that .LST is the default extension for the TYPE command.
7:07 Yup, see you typed STA, and it assumed the name was STA.LST.
I have a PDP-11-based calculator i've been developing for. not a big enough system to run much of an OS but still neat to mess with. Using a modern-ish version of the macro-11 assembler that runs on Linux, too. Has a very similar syntax and list output as yours does. :p
Elektronika mk90?
I remember writing application software (in insurance agents) back in 1983 . Pip on RSTS-E with Compile Basic. But I prefer the IBM Series/1 from a developer viewpoint with the massive CAP.
4:37 The deletion feedback behaviour depends on whether you tell the terminal driver it’s a “scope” terminal or not. If it is, it can backspace and print a space on top of the wrong character to erase it. But if it prints on paper, then it has to do what you are seeing here, printing out the deleted characters in reverse, with the “\” to bracket the deletion echo sequence.
Yes had any Internet to nearly 2 days HU9
That's one fancy help screen 🧐
Looks like a HP 700/96 terminal. Would be fun to see it talking Block Mode to an HP3000 (or simulation) running a V/Plus app.
I never used a PDP-11, however, RT11 reminded me quite a bit of VMS on the VAX which was definitely interesting. I've forgotten much of the the very small amount I once knew.
KED also reminded me of EDT. I had a hard time wrapping my head around those PFn keys. Probably the main reason I prefer *nix machines, vi was easier to learn.
I never got to use a PDP11, it was before my time. But it's no shock that a lot of it is familiar to my VAX experience in college.
Great memories and horror stories!
That terminal font is amazing! I want one of these PiDP-11s but I have no idea what I'd use it for!
You can still have the pi do other things the emulator is not intensive. So you could have a pi hole or website running or something along with the normal operation of the pidp
@@tylerdean980 good point. I currently have a pi doing similar duties, perhaps it can be made in to a pidp-11!
You have to replace HP terminal with vt220 from digital. This should fix all the issues. :)
HP actually made versions of their HP700 terminal intended for DEC VT220 emulation and those models actually came with a DEC VT220 keyboard layout (with PF1-PF4 above the numpad and the 20 F keys with Help and Do across the top). Unfortunately those models won’t do native HP emulation (i.e. for HP3000). It looks like the poster has a model intended for native HP use (probably a 700/92) which can also do VT100 and VT220 (best of both worlds) but without the VT keyboard layout. They obviously mapped the PF1(Gold)-PF4 keys to keys that approximated the location on a VT keyboard. Some PC terminal emulators like to map them to F1-F4 since those keys are entirely local on a VT220 but people probably find that unnatural. I think that HP terminal would start with F6 in the F1 location. Kind of confusing but no one can match the crisp letters on HP terminals.
Thanks for the tour. I used 11/45s for graphics research MASc and then VAX 11/780,785 all running various versions of UNIX. I programmed a PDP-8 as a high school student. So much fun.
Why is there so many confusing (for me) mappings between the HP keyboard and what the RSX expects? Is that at VT52 or VT100 emulation issue? Thanks for the video
You find backslash confusing? Great to know I’m not the only one here!😂
Interesting how some commands and conventions are still used in Windows’s CMD.
its base on prototype of dos...but processor is not automatic...they have to keep manually erase registers and send new instruction by feeding the machine what user trying to do for devices ...this is stuff is not automatic like today cpu's are built in with everything without user need for hardware processing by hand for the software ...vs today its only software and user components...picture this like 2 cars ...manual drive shaft for a computer vs automatic transmission in today cars does that for you without worry too much than drive and reverse only
@@JuanPerez-jg1qk :Por favor escriba su respuesta en español para que pueda leerla usando un traductor.
Curious, who was the primary customer for DEC for PDP-11s and what was the common software that was run? Like was it only science and universities or did businesses also buy them for billing or inventory etc?
I did business graphics (1986, well before Powerpoint was a thing) on PDP11-based GENIGRAPHICS workstation. Output was "printed" on 35mm Kodak Ektachrome slide film.
Most of the time we got handwritten notes and some scribbeled designs and then had to build the presentations for some executives to show them with a slide-projector
used for things like process control in industry, in medical settings re: patient records/interfacing to biochemical analysers, also in a fair number of financial settings where you didn't need 1000s of terminals connected. Also, things like hotels (reservation/admin). Plus libraries/book & other inventory management systems. My 20 year IT career was based on, initially, PDPs running commercial applications, which I programmed, in the main
A lot of their customers were engineers, and the company itself was run by engineers. That’s why they introduced the “PDP” name (“Programmed Data Processor”), instead of calling their products “computers”. Because if the engineering departments at their customers tried to buy a “computer”, they would have the budget and management folks nosing around, wondering why they were not buying from IBM instead.
0:53 so, the operating system here is gnu?
Why the spelling of F3B\B3\EB for February, if I may ask? Is it a challenge for the PDP to process string literals?
That is what appears when you use backspace.
What are these links to? Looks like high tech stuff? !
is yes shock that a lot of it is familiar to my VAX experience in college.
In the museum of computer i boot a real one you have to put a paper tape press some buttons then it will boot up
i want a wild berry retro computer
i bet back then early dos when it was before everything was automatic command and execution vs 70's is like manual command and manually doing things in hard way that take more time from user vs today is very fast to do it cause Microsoft dos made it possible by help of bios that gave life to computers in the homes by making devices smaller ...unix also help their camp to produces extraordinary clones like macos x and linux based distros
ＶＭＳはどこにいった？！
I am using the much older RT11 O/S
VMS does not run on a PDP-11. The PDP-11 is a 16-bit machine. VMS ran on the later 32-bit VAX.
But you could network an PDP-11/RT-11 machine with an VAX/VMS, and since the VAX was much faster and could compile to PDP-11 code, it was common to do the editing, compiling, and linking on the VAX, and copy the resulting program to the PDP-11.
@@JanBruunAndersen 詳しい情報ありがとうございました。
私が初めてインターネットに触れたのは、学生時代のＶＡＸのVMSで動いていたキャラクタ端末でニュースグループでした。
当時はhttpsもモザイクもなく、キャラクタのみの時代でした。
いまはＤＥＣもサン・マイクロシステムズもなくなり、寂しい限りでございます。
流れの早いこの業界の定めでしょうか。
一時代を築いたＤＥＣの情報をありがとうございます。
Isn't it related to VMS
VMS didn’t come out until 1977. It was definitely inspired by it.
No Pdp booted that fast ever lol
Unix...🙃🙃🙃
I spent a lot of time on an 11/70 yikes lol...
Denis Richi?🙃🙃🙃
The father of UNIX 💪
and wtf is a pdp ?
Programmed Data Processor. DEC didn't want to call it a computer to make it easier for customer to purchase one without having to explain the need for a 'computer' to the bean counters.
Only mad people here, what are they running on it, why they all cry ?
I sav ADVENT in the listing - he has the Collossal Cave (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure)